China breaks up $64 billion underground banking network

China said it cracked the nation’s biggest “underground bank,” which handled 410 billion yuan ($64 billion) of illegal foreign exchange transactions, as the authorities try to combat corruption and rein in capital outflows that have hit records this year.

More than 370 people have been arrested or face lawsuits or other punishment in the case centred in eastern Zhejiang province, the official People’s Daily reported on Friday, citing police officials. The case brought the total for underground banking and money laundering activities to 800 billion yuan since April, the newspaper said.

The probe began in September last year and the police took almost a year to sort through more than 1.3 million suspicious transactions, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported separately. The authorities froze more than 3,000 bank accounts, Xinhua said.

GLOBAL FLOWS

The case highlights the nation’s struggle to control capital outflows that have helped to send real estate prices soaring from Vancouver to Sydney – even when Chinese citizens are officially limited to converting $50,000 of yuan per year. Some people may be moving the proceeds of corruption while others may be concerned about the outlook for the economy and the potential for the yuan to weaken.

“The government wants to stem outflows and stabilise the yuan’s exchange rate, but the outflows cannot be stopped unless people change their expectation on yuan depreciation,” said Xi Junyang, a finance professor at Shanghai University of Finance & Economics.

Besides illegal banking operations, “a lot of money is leaving the country by legal means,” Xi said.

China’s capital outflows may have climbed to a record $194 billion in September before cooling to $62 billion in October, according to a Bloomberg gauge which also takes into account decisions by exporters and direct investment recipients to hold funds in dollars.

‘SMURFING’

The tactics used by Chinese citizens to defeat the controls include so-called smurfing, where large sums are moved by breaking them down into a series of smaller transfers using the bank accounts and foreign exchange quotas of a range of individuals.

In the Zhejiang case, a suspect identified as Zhao Mouyi used a different method, setting up more than 10 companies in Hong Kong from 2013 and transferring more than 100 billion yuan through so-called non-resident accounts, which are used by offshore companies in China when they are transferring money abroad, according to the newspaper’s report.

Taking advantage of a “loophole” relating to nonresident accounts – which has since been filled by banks – Zhao circumvented the capital controls by directly transferring yuan overseas and then exchanged the money into foreign currencies at banks including HSBC Holdings in Hong Kong.

Zhao then allegedly transferred it to his clients’ accounts, the report said, citing the local police.